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Show I Fable of the Corset in the Watermelon Patch. H Once upon a time a certain flourishing young I Fruit Tree having chanced upon a few copies of I Harper's Bazoo and Le Bon Ton Delineator, began I immediately to have an attack of that Uneasy I Feeling. "Nature has done something for me," she admitted ad-mitted modestly, "and even the Pear Tree down in the hollow acknowledges, with a succession of Low Boughs, that I am indeed a Peach. "However, I begin to perceive after a careful study of these Fcishion Plates that Nature is received re-ceived into the best families only with her hair combed and a few Frills adorning her system. It behooves me, therefore, to move away from this Potato Patch, with its Low Associations, to the top of yonder Hill, where the Upper Ten dwell. These Potatoes and Turnips are cultivated enough in their homely way, but they lack Style; besides, their forms have no Shape." So the Peach Tree, bv virtue of a Powerful Pull exerted in her behalf by the Horticulturist, was transplanted to the top of Knob Hill. With the utmost dispatch she bought a full length mirror and certain Mysterious Accessories and began to correct some of the Glaring Blunders which Nature had made. She bought a modernized type of steel-and-whalebono bullet-proof Armor, known as a Tight Lacer, and after encasing her trunk in it and adding a little judicious Padding she asked a neighboring seedy Cow Pumpkin whether she had at last arrived at the proper Kangaroo Shape. "It's a Cinch)' said the Seedy Pumpkin. The Peach Tree then enclosed her lower limbs in Ftou Frou reams from Paree, leaving the upper work decollete. When the cheeks of the Peaches began to get sunburned she knocked out the Tan with daily applications of Creme de la Lum Turn and a little lit-tle Whitewash. Deciding that the plebian dust around her was ruining her complexion and soiling her leaves, she (caused herself to be surrounded by a Cement Pavement extending sixteen feet in every direction. direc-tion. When her health began to fail she comforted herself by saying that it made her look Pale and Interesting. "It is due to the overexertion of moving away from the -uncultivated Hill Tribes," she said. "I must consult a Fashionable Physician. My circulation cir-culation seems to be impaired." The doctor came, felt of her pulse, looked at I her evidences of Wealth, and said, "Two Hundred Dollars." The wise physician looked up her Family Tree and found not only that a Horse Thief had once been hanged upon it, but that it was at the mo-, mo-, ment loaded with some basketfuls of Clings. "Aha! It is a Serious Case," he said. "" Se he prescribed seventeen kinds of medicine and loaned her a book entitled "Some Easy and Painless Substitutes for Beauty and Health." I Taking the advice of this excellent volume " along with the Drugs, she imported at great expense ex-pense a lot of foreign speaking Curculios to curl her leaves for her, and a few thousand menial 1 but active Caterpillars to weave the finest Veils all over her Pale but Interesting Countenance. ' Meantime the Wise Physician looked Grave and shook his head. He also thoughtfully shook the tro and walked absent mindedly away with all aer Wealth of ripe Clings. While all this was taking place, and this Peacherino Dame was flaunting 'her Glad Rags from the Recherche Hilltop of Fashion, a bunch j of Meek and Lowly Watermelons, off at one side, n la and gazed up at the giddy spectacle, and as I lhoy watched they slowly turned Green with I Eny. I "What a Graft that Peach Tree seems to have," I they said. "Verily, Nature doesn't know . her il f 4 M business. If she can gain social pre-eminence by changing her Gowns four times a day and employing em-ploying a Fashionable Physician, why shouldn't We?" "That," quoth the Seedy Pumpkin, "sounds Logical, but it is really Pomological. If you, also, go to reaching out for female Fripperies and High Art, I warn you that your friends will Cut you Dead. Besides, you people are Farmers, living next to the Earth, and without any possibility of a Family Tree. You have Low Born Freckles as big as a House, and your Sawed Off Forms will never take kindly to Padding." "Scandalous!" chorused the Freckled Watermelons. Water-melons. "While it is true that we are Disgustingly Disgust-ingly Healthy, yet the Doctor and the Dressmaker may be depended upon to remove that Impediment Impedi-ment to Social Four Hundredness." "The Tree is certainly a Peach," admitted the Pumpkin, "and I admire the skill with which she applies the Varnish to her Deformities, and ap-precite ap-precite her Culture, or rather her Horticulture; but I warn you that no amount of boiled down Tea Leaves will ever bleach your hair to the modish Gold and Amber tint, and I predict that the Whalebone will pinch you under the Arms." But he expostulated with the giddy Watermelons Water-melons in vain. They followed the lead of the Exclusive Peach Tree, and bowed down before her new born Gawds. They used up large quantities of Violet Water in their daily dew baths and took to wearing Face Masks. They checked their growing tendency to Obesity and struggled to acquire the cute Kangaroo Kan-garoo Shape by the usual steel-and-whalebone route, as shown in the picture. "Ladies," remarked the Seedy Pumpkin, one day to the Fashionable Martyrs, "receive my Congratulations Con-gratulations You now look like twin sisters to the plebian Crook-Neck Squash." But they gave him the Glassy Stare. And so, under the Illusion of Art, and while the young and tender Watermelons were Flying High in their new-found Butterfly Existence, The Sordid Horticulturist with Hayseed in his Hair leaned over the fence and Sized them Up, in all their Cloying beauty. "They're wuth about two cents a hundred," he said, and by way of reaping that crop of aspiring Melons he laid about him with an ax. And so, feeling terribly Cut Up, they Perished, Miserably; whereupon the Seedy One, taking in the situation, began to declaim: "List to the Moral, world-embracing, Beware, sweet Melons, Fashion's Frolic! Beware the Cinch, y-clept Tight Lacing-Beware Lacing-Beware their fate so Melancholic!" Grant Wallace in San Francisco Bulletin. |
